Around 1,500 people marched in Newcastle on 16 February against a proposed £100m of council cuts.

Residents, trade unionists, community activists and students united to build the protest. It was coordinated by the Stop the Cuts-Save Our Services coalition of ten different campaigns of users and workers.

We are opposing the closure of libraries, play services, youth service. Also proposed are cuts to respite care, and cuts to older people’s services and community centres.

“Workfare” schemes took a blow on Tuesday 12 February as two unemployed workers won Court of Appeal cases which ruled that attempts to force them to work for free, or risk losing their benefits, were unlawful.

Now an article in the Financial Times has knocked them further, by publicising a Labour Party survey from 2008 which looked at the use of similar schemes in America, Canada, and Australia. The study concluded that “Workfare

Teachers at Bishop Challoner school in East London are voting in an indicative ballot for strikes against the victimisation of a National Union of Teachers rep, and again what workers describe as an authoritarian and bullying management regime inside the school.

The Home Office statistics bulletin on sexual offending in England and Wales estimates that 2.5% of women and 0.4% of men were the victims of sexual assault in 2011/12, representing around 473,000 adults. The police recorded a total of 53,000 cases of sexual assault over the same period.

It is estimated that around 0.5% of women and 0.1% of men were victims of rape or sexual assault by penetration in 2011-12, 85,000 and 12,000 respectively. The total number of “most serious sexual crimes” recorded by the police in the same period was 42,976, less than half.

Christopher Dorner was a former Los Angeles cop. He was sacked in 2008, alleging racism. In February 2013 he allegedly conducted a series of shooting in which he killed four people. Hunted by police, he eventually died as they set fire to the cabin where he was hiding. This article was written by Matthew Cunningham-Cook for the left-wing American magazine Jacobin. It is reproduced, abridged, from their website, and can be read in full here.